Can't help I'm afraid and can't find anything by Googling either. I've got to go there at least twice in the next two months too but the last time I was over was in April before the current strikes started. Although French strikes don't usually last that long, they throw their toys out of the pram and after a few days go back to normal.

This may or may not be helpful - just watching the news and apparently nuclear power station workers have also joined the strike - it's all due to an imminent change in laws for workers. The way it was presented suggested the strike is spreading so maybe all of France will be out on strike soon! The last words of the report - "Motorists are being warned not to run out of fuel"

*** EDIT ***Apparently the French Air Traffic Controllers are also on strike. If it keeps going like this the whole country will be on strike soon - no wonder we want out of the EU!

From what i understand from the news, many ferry crossings are cancelled, particularly in the Portsmouth/Dieppe routes and that general area. The Dover-Calais crossings don't seem to be effected - yet!

It's the same every year. This time last year I was over there and there were strikes so ferries weren't running at times. My mate who's lived there for over 30 years said that it's because they only really want to work a 4 day week and once the bank holiday season is over, they are expected to work 5 days a week so go on strike to get the extra time off. It'll be over in a few days and things will return to normal, or as normal as France ever is.

As for getting out of the EU, I'm not going to start an argument but I don't think most people have thought it through. Have you looked at your passport? It won't be valid until you are issued with a replacement. Same goes for the V5 for your car. I've got a European Health Insurance card in my wallet so if I need hospital treatment abroad, the bill gets sent directly to the NHS. Without that, I just hope I've got enough available on my credit card so I can pay and then claim back on my travel insurance. There's so many little things that have become intertwined over the last 30 years or so, we'll become prisoners in our own little island.

I think we should probably leave the EU for somewhere else but i have to admit i didn't even know those points you raised. Then again i don't have a passport or any desire for one and as for the V5, if we hadn't let Europe dictate to us in the first place, we wouldn't have that potential problem. I daresay some small law will be passed to make all V5s legal and same goes for passports until they are renewed/changed naturally by selling a car or renewing a passport.

and where would you pass this law? We can pass a law that says that a UK EU passport is valid as a ID document while you are within the UK but as soon as you leave the country, other countries would be well within their rights to refuse to accept a fraudulent EU passport issued in a country that is no longer in the EU.

Didn't think of that! Perhaps part of the agreement of leaving the EU is that passports that are currently valid would remain valid until their renewal date - i expect this would work both ways as foreigners here on EU passports would presumably need visas or something for extended stays and if we were no longer part of the EU we wouldn't consider their passports valid?

Seldom there are political comments on forum! Regardless of what happens I doubt there'll be a situation where e.g. Spain says 'Sorry Brits, you're no longer in Europe so we can't have you coming here spending your GBP holiday billions until you've got that bit of red tape sorted!'. Eaurocrats might want Spain to do that but would be unlikely to insist on it because the resultant fallout could cause further chaos within the Eurozone. I don't think we need worry about our DVLA dumping registered vehicle keepers details, leaving us without a working logbook system or calling into doubt vehicle ownership and driver's accountability, or need to worry much about Europe not allowing us to take our cars, lorries and coaches across. Else it will be all aboard the Vengabus to Jamaica, not Ibiza, when it comes to holidays and business! Passports and V5's are only printed bits of paper... although they may no longer have politically correct format the common sense take should be that they remain just as valid as before until a replacement format is drawn up. Some might consider a different take by Europe following Brexit to be spiteful but not all EU countries would be willing to bite their own noses to spite their faces.,..

I won't be concerned much if French workers strike to work the same hours as Father Xmas in the 70's

Didn't think of that! Perhaps part of the agreement of leaving the EU is that passports that are currently valid would remain valid until their renewal date - i expect this would work both ways as foreigners here on EU passports would presumably need visas or something for extended stays and if we were no longer part of the EU we wouldn't consider their passports valid?

That's the problem, there is no agreement of what will happen if we leave, we leave and are left to sort the mess out ourselves, we've caused it after all. We, as in the country, would be left to grovel and plead with the other EU countries to allow our citizens the same rights as they had previously but there's nothing to say they have to agree to it. A holder of an EU passport doesn't need a visa to come to the UK and the same works for all other EU countries so we can travel freely within the EU. If we are no longer part of the EU we would then have the same status in other EU countries as anyone else from outside the EU, we'd need a Schengen visa. The French, being the most bureaucratic nation in the world (well, second only to India in my experience) would soon pick up on that, the queues of people outside the French Embassy waiting to get their visa would stretch to somewhere in the region of Birmingham.....

Yes Simon, the Spanish wouldn't want to lose the income from tourists but as part of the EU they will have to impose the same rules as the other EU countries. So if it is decided that we need a visa for one, we'd need one for all the others whether the Spanish like it or not.

I'll admit I've got a vested interest. For the last 6 years I've been importing cars from both the US and Russia that, being left hand drive, are destined for France. The aforementioned French bureaucracy will not register a car from outside the EU without a European Certificate of Conformity which none have as they are built for the US or Russian markets. But, they can be registered here, once on UK registration can be taken to France and, as an import from another EU country, can be transferred to French registration. If we are no longer EU, the French will soon pick up on that and there will be no point in registering them here and I'll have no need for an LPG fuelled Range Rover to tow them on a trailer to the south of France a few times a year. I've got a Porsche on Russian plates halfway through the process and two cars in a container from the US at the moment, they will suddenly become worthless overnight.

The trouble for Father Christmas in the 70s was when the 3-day-week came in. He thought it was compulosry and resented having to work and extra 2 days each year!!

I know we would suddenly all need visas to visit the EU but what about the EU people already here? Surely they would also need visas overnight as well - i suspect the EU for once in their lives will let sanity and common sense prevail and allow a period of grace before the visas become necessary and i'm sure we would reciprocate - similar goes for passports, V5s etc.I'd sort of guessed your import/export emporium was on your mind regarding BRexit. The whole set up at the moment works well for you on that basis and to be honest, i think there would have to be some sort of grace period/parachute time for various businesses to tie up their ends and potentially renegotiate trading terms with their EU trading partners. Don't forget though, we still export a lot to the EU as well as buying from the EU - not one of those countries is going to want trade sanctions imposed because they're beingspiteful about us coming out of the EU, assuming that is what happens. We won't know until at least friday 24th June.

For my part, i was a toddler when we joined the Common Market as it was then and then decimal currency came in and other things and i've always felt we, as a country, were being ripped off by the Common Market, EU or whatever they want to call themselves. Also we fought two world wars so we had the freedom to not kow-tow to the Europeans and yet they are making our laws for us in the form of EU directives (the 48 hour working week for example) and immigration and all sorts of other things.

There's always pros and cons to anything like this and whether we stay in or leave the EU, there will be pros and cons and i'm sure that either way, there will be more cons than pros but as is often noted, i'm a cynical old git anyway!

Somewhat playing devil's advocate Richard, but your situation could be interpreted like this...

If there were no Eurozone at all then the French might not allow you to take an American import registered in the UK to France.

Current situation is that we're in the Eurozone, so you can take an American import registered in the UK to France.... but only because we have different import rules to France!

Eurozone intends on further standardisation - You pointed out V5's. If we stay in the Eurozone then either the day will come where we have the same rules as France, where it is very difficult to import a US vehicle even into the UK, or maybe the British rules will become the standard, in which case your French customers can import \us vehicles into France as easily as you can.

If we exit Eurozone then you will at least still be able to import US cars to the UK. Maybe in the Eurozone it will be very difficult to import a US vehicle, or maybe Eurozone will standardise more relaxed rules like those in the UK. If Eurozone standardises relaxed rules on US imports then it would be difficult for Europe to justify not allowing vehicles registered in the UK to be imported.

At the moment the chaotic situation is what you need to do what you do, and I hope there's some way that will continue for you, but it doesn't look likely to stay that way for long regardless of the UK staying in or leaving Eurozone... Or if we do stay in Eurozone, maybe it does look likely to stay that way - It seem it is only the disorganised mess of rules that makes it possible to import a US car to Britain, register it here and then ship it to France when you could not import a US car directly into France from the US in the first place?

For every winner due to the 'laws of chaos' like yourself there will be several losers.. When 'standardised' means nothing of the sort but an extra layer of bureaucracy, that can't be great for business in general. Possible to imagine similar circumstances, e.g. where Eurozone wouldn't allow a direct import of item A from none European country B to European country C, but there may be some loop-hole where item A can be imported into European country D, then go through European countries E, F, G in turn before finally making it to country C.

It seem it is only the disorganised mess of rules that makes it possible to import a US car to Britain, register it here and then ship it to France when you could not import a US car directly into France in the first place?

The current situation only exists because in the UK we have a history of kit cars and Classic cars, in France they don't. Consequently, we have the IVA scheme, the VOSA Mutual Recognition scheme, we can fit our own LPG systems, cars are imported from Japan all the time and with minor modifications can be registered here (just see how many Mitsubishi Pajeros you see on the roads, they are all imports as the European version was called the Shogun), etc. France doesn't have the equivalent to any of these schemes because even if they did, nobody would use them. It is impossible to register a kit car in France, it simply cannot be done. Nobody even bothers to repair a car, why on earth would anyone go to the trouble of building one when Mr Renault, Mr Peugeot and Mr Citroen make sufficient for everyone? Nothing can be registered in France that doesn't have an EU Certificate of Conformity and as that scheme only started in 1992, anything older than that just can't be registered. That's why I can register an import here but once it arrives in France it's an import from another EU country so can be transferred to French registration as opposed to registered (they assume that as it has already been registered in another EU country, it must have a CoC or at least some sort of equivalent). That situation won't change but what may change is that they will treat something with UK registration as an import from outside the EU.

Some years ago the EU tried to standardise things which would have meant we couldn't register anything without a CoC here either. That was blocked because of our kit car and Classic car industry as it would have been detrimental to the economy (and probably because quite a few MPs and members of the house of Lords are into their Classics too).

Adding a slightly different view to this last bit, wasn't the reason we ended up with the likes of Nissan, Toyota and Honda building factories here in the first place to get round the import tax on cars built in Japan - i.e. outside the EU? Now we have Toyotas built by Peugeot (think it's the 1007/Prius but might have the model name and number wrong, little 3 cylinder job the size of a plant pot and about as attractive!) in France and sold not only as Toyots but as Peugeots as well.If the Japs can find (and exploit) loopholes, there's still hope for your business Richard, even if we do leave the EU. Like Simon says, the EU countries still have their cars to sell and if they stop us selling our cars (even secondhand ones imported from the USA) in Eirope then there will be a lot of French, German and other cars growing old and rusty in the dockyard having never been registered!The Lamb Wars in the late 70s/early 80s is another example, the French didn't like the fact our lamb was cheaper (and better!) than theirs so they tried to stop the free trade that was meant to be part of the Common Market as it was then or European Economic Community or whatever they called the EU at that point in history.

Adding a slightly different view to this last bit, wasn't the reason we ended up with the likes of Nissan, Toyota and Honda building factories here in the first place to get round the import tax on cars built in Japan - i.e. outside the EU?

Yes, that's right. Why do you think big business is so against leaving the EU? Cars built at the Nissan plant at Sunderland, the Toyota Plant at Derby, the Honda plant at Reading and the Peugeot plant at Ryton (the old Rootes plant that was rescued by Peugeot) will be imports from outside the EU so will be uneconomical to sell in Europe as they will have import duty slapped on them. The manufacturers will do as others have done (Ford, Vauxhall) and move production to Czechoslovakia, Spain, Austria, etc, all EU countries. That'll really do our economy and unemployment figures a power of good.....

Sorry, I forgot, there'll be all the job vacancies left by all the EU migrants that we kick out. This is also something I know a bit about as my partner is an EU migrant. She has done her fair share of immigrant work in the past and the reason why the migrants come here from the other EU countries is because there is the work and they are the only people prepared to do it. They take the jobs that British workers won't do. Without the migrants our hotel, catering, and food producing industry, not to mention the NHS, would collapse. My partner worked in an onion packing plant supplying a number of different supermarkets, 6 til 6 every day, day and night shifts. 12 hours a day for 5 or 6 days a week. That's a 60 or 72 hour working week at £7.20 an hour minimum wage. Illegal under the work time directive which says nobody can be made to work more than 48 hours in a week but it doesn't apply if the staff are employed by an agency and supplied to the employer. In this area there are literally hundreds of similar packing plants supplying every supermarket with every item of fresh fruit, veg and the fresh cut flowers you buy for your missus when you need to earn some brownie points. So when you see Grown in the UK on the veg you've just bought from Tesco, it may have been grown here but it's been harvested, graded, cleaned, packed and dispatched to the supermarket by an army of Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, etc. Ever wondered why the cleaners and porters in hospitals don't speak English? The migrants are the only ones that will do the work. The number of immigrants may put a strain on the NHS but without them there would be no NHS. Same goes for the stuff you order from Amazon, the warehouse staff are supplied through labour agencies and the British unemployed won't do that work, it's beneath them, they'd rather sit on their arses watching Jeremy Kyle on their 50" TV and collecting their benefits. They certainly wouldn't go out and do a 12 hour shift for 5 days a week even if it does pay £430 a week, that's to much like hard work, they'll leave that to the immigrants to do.

OK rant over, now back to cars.....

LairdScooby wrote:

Now we have Toyotas built by Peugeot (think it's the 1007/Prius but might have the model name and number wrong, little 3 cylinder job the size of a plant pot and about as attractive!) in France and sold not only as Toyots but as Peugeots as well.

It's the Peugeot 107/Toyota Aygo but that's nothing new. Why would two manufacturers design and build two near identical cars aimed at the same market when they can pool their resources and collaborate on designing and producing one with minor differences? That's been going on for years. Doesn't the Honda Accord, Triumph Acclaim mean anything?

LairdScooby wrote:

If the Japs can find (and exploit) loopholes, there's still hope for your business Richard, even if we do leave the EU. Like Simon says, the EU countries still have their cars to sell and if they stop us selling our cars (even secondhand ones imported from the USA) in Eirope then there will be a lot of French, German and other cars growing old and rusty in the dockyard having never been registered!

I don't see why. The EU could impose import duty on anything produced in the UK, just as they do with anything else produced outside the EU, which would kill our motor manufacturing business overnight but I doubt it would have too much affect the other way round. It might affect the likes of Peugeot, Citroen and Renault but they'd probably see it as a bonus as they'd no longer have to bother producing RHD versions but it wouldn't affect Mercedes, BMW or Audi as the stupid Brits would still keep buying them irrespective of the cost. The only reason I can move secondhand cars from the USA to France is because they are coming from another EU country. They still have import duty on them, I pay that when they arrive here. They could still be sent to France but could never be registered as they don't have an EU CoC. They can't be registered if they go direct from the US as it is outside the EU and they don't have an EU CoC and while they can be registered here because of our IVA scheme, if we are outside the EU they will still be an import from outside the EU.

LairdScooby wrote:

The Lamb Wars in the late 70s/early 80s is another example, the French didn't like the fact our lamb was cheaper (and better!) than theirs so they tried to stop the free trade that was meant to be part of the Common Market as it was then or European Economic Community or whatever they called the EU at that point in history.

But that's just the French farmers and they'll protest against anything if it means they get a day off, just like the current strikes that started this thread in the first place.

Re the 107/Aygo, i wasn't seeking to denegrate collaboration between manufacturers - like you say that's nothing new. Go back to the Rootes Group (that originally owned the Ryton plant) and they had Singer, Hillman, Humber, Talbot to name but a few and then there was Austin, Morris, Wolseley et al that formed BMC/BL and indeed my own Rover 827s aka Honda Legends, then the 600/Accord and the Ballade Mk1/Acclaim and Ballade Mk2/Rover 213 and so on.

What i was actually pointing out is the French now have their own collaborative manufacturing as well.

As for our motor industry being decimated overnight, we haven't had a motor industry for some time IMHO - we simply build cars for foreigners, there are no home-grown, mass produced cars made here anymore. That said, i'm sure the Japanese won't take kindly to having huge import taxes slapped on their cars because we are no longer part of the EU or the cost of shifting production to some far-flung land and will no doubt put pressure on the EU to rethink the import duty.

Out of interest, are there no Peugeots, Citroens, Renaults etc in places like South Africa, Australia, New Zealand etc? I tend to agree about the German contingent and the attitude to them here, when the diesel cloud finally does burst, there will be a lot of very unhappy Brits i reckon!

Re the migrant workers here, the emphasis is on the "workers" bit i think. Those that come here and work do help the economy, it's the mass immigration from those that don't that i think most people object to. If they were all deported overnight then all those dole-loafers would indeed have to get off their collective ar5e and go to work, depleting Jeremy Kyles viewing figures by a considerable amount! Historically though we (as a country) have always relied on migrant workers for harvesting etc but in days gone by, there were small groups that worked their way through different farms and areas to get the harvest in. Now it seems like there are millions of these small groups staying here on a permanent basis without working.

[quote]Yes Simon, the Spanish wouldn't want to lose the income from tourists but as part of the EU they will have to impose the same rules as the other EU countries. So if it is decided that we need a visa for one, we'd need one for all the others whether the Spanish like it or not.[/quote]

Not according to other EU countries, they all seem to say they would require visas to visit if you have a UK passport.

UK citizens living in Spain cost them far more than tourism generates, and there are 4 times as many Brits in Spain then Spanish in the UK.

My interest? I am a British citizen married to s Spanish citizen, she has access to Spanish info seeing it from the other side.

We have just returned from a drive to Rome and back. We only spent a few hours in France on the way back after filling up in Germany and before filling up in Belgium but saw no evidence of fuel shortages in the French motorway services.

There is a link on the British Government Foreign Office travel advice page about France that takes you to a French website that lists fuel prices, they currently have a map detailing where has fuel shortages.

Not according to other EU countries, they all seem to say they would require visas to visit if you have a UK passport.

If they would even accept a UK passport. They clearly state that they are a European Union passport issued in the UK but if we aren't in the EU we can't issue EU passports.......

Talkingcars wrote:

BTW fuel is currently cheaper in the UK than any we saw elsewhere.

Petrol may be, diesel is in some countries but LPG is cheaper in most countries. It's about the same as UK in France but Belgium is the place to fill up on LPG, it's ridiculously cheap.

LairdScooby wrote:

What i was actually pointing out is the French now have their own collaborative manufacturing as well.

As for our motor industry being decimated overnight, we haven't had a motor industry for some time IMHO - we simply build cars for foreigners, there are no home-grown, mass produced cars made here anymore. That said, i'm sure the Japanese won't take kindly to having huge import taxes slapped on their cars because we are no longer part of the EU or the cost of shifting production to some far-flung land and will no doubt put pressure on the EU to rethink the import duty.

These days the motor industry is so multi national that you can't really say what country it is based in. Although you may not think of it as British, the Toyota Avensis is not only British built but British designed and developed too and then sold worldwide. So while the funding for it may come from Japan, it is a British product. The same goes for many of the other cars built here, they are British cars but with a foreign manufacturers badge and funding. Then there are the long established manufacturers owned by others who keep the badge. A few years ago I asked someone quite high up in Ford what had happened to their executive model. The Escort had become the Focus, the Sierra had become the Mondeo but the Granada had disappeared. I was told that Ford didn't need to make an executive car any more as they owned Volvo and, at the time, Jaguar. For the same reason, they didn't make a sports car as they owned Mazda and the MX5 was the best selling sports car in the world and, for those with even more money, they (at the time) owned Aston Martin too. So while you may think of Volvo as Swedish and Mazda as Japanese, they are both owned by Ford (which is American).

Why would the EU listen to anything from Japan? If the Japanese badged cars built by our British workers in our British factories are hit with import duty if they are sold in the EU, it will be a wonderful boost for Citroen, Renault, Peugeot, Mercedes, BMW, VW, Audi, Seat, and various other European manufacturers. No skin off their noses if the price of Japanese cars increases.

LairdScooby wrote:

Re the migrant workers here, the emphasis is on the "workers" bit i think. Those that come here and work do help the economy, it's the mass immigration from those that don't that i think most people object to.......... Now it seems like there are millions of these small groups staying here on a permanent basis without working.

and I think you'll find if you check that these are the ones that are coming here from outside the EU. The ones that travel across Europe only to end up in the camp in Calais waiting for the opportunity to hide in trucks or use small boats to cross the Channel.

Without the EU immigrants the NHS would collapse, as would the hotel and catering industry and there would be no fresh fruit or veg in any of our supermarkets. The immigrants do the work the Brits consider beneath them. They are the cleaners and porters (and a fair few nurses and doctors too) in the NHS, they are the chambermaids in the hotels, the waiters, waitresses, kitchen staff and pot washers in our restaurants and the people that pick, sort, grade, wash and pack the fruit and veg. My partner is an immigrant and has done her share of immigrant work. 6am to 6pm, 5 days a week in a vegetable packing plant where the only English staff was the manager, everyone else was an immigrant and the common language used by the workforce was Russian. The workers are from staff agencies and, oddly enough, none of the workers registered with the agency are English.......

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